In March 1855 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred, visited the military hospital at Fort Pitt, Chatham. They met some of the 450 soldiers who had returned there from the Crimea. The Queen later wrote to Lord Panmure, Secretary for War, criticising the buildings with their high windows, small wards, and lack of a dining room, ‘so that the poor men must have their dinners in the same room in which they sleep, and in which some may be dying’